Tag Archives: car

All US road casualties mapped

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Via Steve Vance and David Levinson comes this disturbing and interesting web map.

369,629 people died on America’s roads between 2001 and 2009. Following its analysis of UK casualties last week, transport data mapping experts ITO World have taken the official data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration - and produced this powerful map using OpenStreetMap. You can zoom around the map using the controls on the left or search for your town using the box on the right – and the key is on the top left. Each dot represents a life.

On the proposed Stillwater bridge (part 4)

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Yet another view on the proposed Stillwater bridge to Wisconsin.  This time from Micky Cook, a Stillwater city council member in the Pioneer Press.

There are roughly 18,000 commuters who use the Stillwater lift bridge during rush hours on weekdays. The cost of the new bridge is $668 million. Rebuilding the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis cost less than half that amount, $261 million. How can we justify such an outrageous expense in this economy to accommodate a Wisconsin commuter corridor? According to MnDOT, 75 percent of weekday trips are commuters coming from Wisconsin. There already is a major freeway bridge roughly five miles south of the proposed site on Interstate 94 that connects to a network of highways in Wisconsin.

We all know the litany of economic ills we face. Gas prices are approaching an all-time high, a record number of homes are in foreclosure, people have lost their jobs and there is no more local government aid to help municipalities maintain services. The price tag on this project warrants serious discussion. If we do have that kind of money, shouldn’t we use it to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure of existing bridges and roads?

Isn’t this really just another development story? The current contingent pushing hard for a new bridge argues it is for the greatest possible good. We need to ask for whom and at what cost?

Ms. Cook also proposes some alternative solutions to deal with traffic in the area caused by commuters.

What about metering traffic lights or negotiating with the Coast Guard for a change in the lift bridge schedule to reduce the number of times the bridge is lifted during peak times? We could post the lift schedule and ask MnDOT to set up a traffic notice at the I-694 and I-494 interchange off of Highway 36, alerting drivers of bridge delays and redirecting them to alternate routes. We could lobby to make the lift bridge one-way heading west in the morning and eastbound for the afternoon commute. Big employers in the area could provide shuttle services and offer incentives for Wisconsin employees to use it from a Park & Ride on the other side of the river. Stillwater could use reserve officers to direct traffic during critical commute times and on busy summer weekends.

I’m sure there are other traffic control measures that could be implemented. Not all solutions have to cost outrageous sums of money. But it’s not as exciting as building a big new shiny bridge. And it goes without saying, if the lift bridge poses a real safety risk, it should be shut down immediately.

A very cheap traffic control measure not mentioned would be closing the lift bridge to car traffic.  I don’t believe this would have much ill effect on Stillwater, and would quickly solve traffic problems caused by commuters (I think they’d still have a lot of traffic, which is a good thing for downtown).

P.S. I really don’t intend for this blog to be all Stillwater bridge, all the time, I promise.  Things have just been a little busy lately.

On the proposed Stillwater bridge (part 3)

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Stillwater Bridge "Low-Slow" Alternative Drawing

Writing for Minnpost, Steve Berg points out that most politicians seem to view the Stillwater bridge as a freeway-style-bridge versus no freeway-style-bridge proposition, even though there may be another alternative.

What might this new bridge look like?

As I wrote here on March 4, a new bridge should relieve Stillwater’s summertime traffic problems without inducing an excessive amount of sprawl development on the Wisconsin side of the river. Obviously, its design should not intrude on the historic and natural quality of the valley.

That means a so-called “low, slow” solution (PDF) — a bridge that wouldn’t span the river from bluff top to bluff top but drop down to a level more in scale with the existing Lift Bridge. Speeds (and noise) should be kept to a minimum. Engineers might consider a three-lane design that would allow east-west flexibility depending on traffic flow. The bridge should be dynamically tolled as a way to fairly shift costs to users and to help manage traffic buildup in the area.

The park service, in rejecting the freeway-style bridge, seemed almost to invite such a design while rejecting outright the freeway-style bridge that MnDOT proposed.

Note that Berg calls for “dynamic tolling” to shift the cost to users, manage traffic and assumedly reduce sprawl (not subsidize low-density development in Wisconsin).  Other expert sources say a 4-lane bridge would not have enough demand to pay the tolls required to fund it, so I assume demand from a slower, narrower span would not generate enough in tolls to pay the cost.  Perhaps this is why MNDOT has floated the idea of a $3 toll, which would only cover half of the construction cost (but would cover maintenance) of the bigger bridge.

On the proposed Stillwater bridge (part 2)

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Alex, author of Getting Around Minneapolis, has posted an excellent letter he wrote to his representatives and Governor Dayton about the proposed Stillwater bridge.

Dear Senators Franken and Klobuchar and Governor Dayton,

I’m writing to urge you not to support a new bridge across the St. Croix River near Stillwater.  A new bridge would hugely encourage sprawl, which damages the environment, requires costly infrastructure such as sewers and roads, and fosters unhealthy automobile-dependent lifestyles.  Furthermore, a new bridge is not necessary, since the I-94 bridge just 5 miles south of Stillwater has a great deal of excess capacity.

Continue reading →

Road Trains Tested In The Real World

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Road Train Test

Road trains (also called vehicle platooning) are convoys of semi-autonomous vehicles with a professional driver in the lead vehicle.  The Safe Roads and Trains for the Environment initiative (SARTRE) describes road trains as:

…a convoy of vehicles where a professional driver in a lead vehicle drives a line of other vehicles. Each car measures the distance, speed and direction and adjusts to the car in front. All vehicles are totally detached and can leave the procession at any time. But once in the platoon, drivers can relax and do other things while the platoon proceeds towards its long haul destination.

Road trains were actually tested in the real world by Volvo, who is part of the SARTRE team, in December.  They cite the benefits of road trains as numerous:

Platooning is designed to improve a number of things: Firstly road safety, since it minimises the human factor that is the cause of at least 80 percent of the road accidents. Secondly, it saves fuel consumption and thus CO2 emissions by up to 20 percent. It is also convenient for the driver because it frees up time for other matters than driving. And since the vehicles will travel at highway speed with only a few meters gap, platooning may also relieve traffic congestion.

There are some potential downsides to road trains as well, but ideally they can deliver many of the benefits of intra-city transit without some of the drawbacks.  Really road trains are just a stepping stone to fully autonomous cars, and caveats of same apply here as well.

The Rest Of The Story On Robot Cars

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The City Fix scooped me on using the Johnny Cab image, but tribute must be paid to such a forward-looking film.

The internet seemed to resound with almost unmitigated delight when Google announced their progress on driverless cars last week.  German scientists see a “golden future” for their driverless vehicles.  There are, however, some key implications that are being missed about what it means if our cars are driven by robots.  I’ll preface the rest of this post by saying that I think the benefits of robot cars probably outweigh the drawbacks.  However, robot cars are not a panacea, and we shouldn’t overlook unintended consequences.

David Levinson at The Transportationist does an excellent job summarizing why robot cars matter, but in my opinion doesn’t go far enough explaining the potential downsides.  Here are some of my thoughts on why we should adopt robot cars carefully, even with their myriad advantages.   Continue reading →

Cities prepare for the electric car, but are they thinking about the roads?

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Potholes - courtesy flickr user MSVG

The New York Times describes a number of cities, mostly in California, that are preparing their communities for the adoption of more electric vehicles. Primarily this means installing charging stations in public places and addressing code issues related to charging stations at single family homes. According to the article, San Francisco will soon have a new ordinance that requires new structures have the wiring to accommodate charging stations.

The article doesn’t address the other half of the auto infrastructure: the roads. To “prepare” for the electric car, and probably even an efficient system that doesn’t include the electric car, road funding needs to change. We already know that users now only pay about half of the cost of roads, which means there are no market signals for road users to choose the most efficient mode or “consume” an appropriate amount of transportation service (miles traveled). We also have some serious deferred maintenance issues.  If electric vehicles are adopted in large numbers funding for roads, which comes in large part from the gas tax, will continue to dry up.

So besides building charging stations and beefing up transmission infrastructure, cities, counties and states (and users, if they want good roads) should be advocating for a mileage-based fee, similar to what has been studied in Oregon and implemented in the Netherlands, to pay for road building and maintenance. The gas tax would probably have to stay, but as a way to put a price on carbon pollution rather than fund transportation.

This new mileage fee could be tacked unto your home electricity bill if you had a charging station, but that would probably mean a lot of creative solutions would pop up (solar panels) to avoid the fee. While this would have it’s environmental benefits, it wouldn’t solve the transportation funding problem. So the fee should be based purely on mileage, not the fuel used. Existing technology is adequate to provide a method to assess the fee, including addressing privacy concerns. The Oregon pilot has shown that this can work, it’s only a matter of political will to implement it.

US-China Electric Car Project Kind of Misses the Point

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The BYD E6 Electric Car

The BYD E6 Electric Car

Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth has a good discussion with Lee Schipper about the problems with the US-China deal on producing electric cars.  Without repeating the post, the essence is that zero-emissions cars don’t solve the traditional problems that planners have been struggling with for a long time.

“Creating a zero-carbon car for China tomorrow won’t solve the much bigger problems of urban congestion, traffic fatalities and the paving over of once-beautiful cities to make room for more cars,” Dr. Schipper said. “The discussions should back up. Energy is only a means to an end. What are the ends, urban access and mobility, or cars for a small minority?”

This isn’t to say that China and the US shouldn’t be building electric vehicles.  Only that a carbon-free car is just that, a car, with all its other attendant issues and urban design challenges/drawbacks.

Dutch Cabinet Approves Kilometer Tax

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The Dutch Cabinet approved legislation Friday that would tax drivers per kilometer driven.  Parliament still needs to pass it before it can become law.  Ownership and sales taxes on autos would be abolished.  The cost per kilometer will vary depending on the size of the car and the engine.  By 2018, the average cost will be 6.7 Euro-cents per kilometer.  Gas tax will still be collected.

Mileage will be calculated by a GPS system made mandatory in each car, initially paid for by the government.  The Transport Ministry says this move could cut carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent, and reduce congestion.

This system is similar to something being tested in Oregon with a small group of volunteers.  According to ODOT’s report, the system is largely successful, despite privacy concerns.

From Autopia, The Truth About Cars.

Road Trains: The Best of Both Worlds?

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The idea of “road trains”, a group of cars using advanced technology to form a caravan of cars driven semi-autonomously, arose from two different sources this week.

The (in)famous Antiplanner, Randall O’Toole, touts road trains as a congestion-relief solution superior to rail building in his new book, Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It.  He says building new roads is “politically difficult” and that new passenger rail construction “rarely makes economic sense”.  Enter road trains.  They can increase the capacity of existing road networks, according to O’Toole.  He claims this technology can increase highway lane capacity by 200% to 400%.

The second source is the EU’s Safe Roads and Trains for the Environment initiative, which is actually implementing the road train concept.  Cars signal their destination wirelessly to road trains already on the road, and then technology takes over to group the cars and control steering, braking and navigation.  The lead vehicle, perhaps a bus or truck driven by a more experienced driver, monitors the status of the road train.  When you approach your exit, your car leaves the train and you resume manual control.  The EU work suggests fuel consumption for the vehicles behind the lead vehicle can be cut by 20%.

This approach avoids the large costs associated with embedding sensors in roadways to guide vehicles, and instead relies on technology within each vehicle (collision avoidance, navigation system, automated braking and steering).  O’Toole puts the cost of this technology at between $1,000 and $10,000 per vehicle.  I’m interested to see if his book includes a calculation of how much transit, bike lanes or other alternatives you could buy for the cost of installing this technology in all vehicles.

The benefits of this technology are numerous if it can be implemented:

  • A reduction in fuel consumption.
  • Providing the comfort and independence of an SOV with some of the efficiencies of transit.
  • Not having to drive.  Giving car passengers back their driving time, for leisure or productivity, would be a huge gain.

I see some downsides though:

  • Increasing capacity on highways doesn’t equal increased capacity on city streets.  This technology is perfect if every destination is adjacent to a freeway off-ramp.  However, greatly increasing the capacity of highways while keeping the city streets (where drivers still have to use their puny human brains to drive) the same seems like it would equal chaos.
  • Equity.  This “solution” to congestion puts all of the costs onto the car owner.  If you think everyone should have equal access to the transportation system (and you plan your land use so that a car is almost essential), you should think about how to make this technology (which probably means a new car) affordable to everyone.  O’Toole suggests “transportation vouchers”, an idea based on people making personal choices about the best transportation mode (although he really thinks there shouldn’t be any choice, the car is king).  Not a bad idea necessarily, but I would suggest combining it with a true mileage tax to raise the necessary revenue.  I assume O’Toole supports this idea since he says in his book review that he does not support any government subsidy to transportation.
  • Different cars and maintenance regimes = crashes?  In all the articles about road trains, I haven’t seen any discussion about how to handle the different capabilities of individual cars.  Some cars have much better brakes than others.  Some cars can accelerate more quickly.  People maintain their cars differently (meaning they do less maintenance).  Can the technology compensate for the different capabilities of each car?  Does each car “know” the distance required to stop based on its components and the condition of its parts?  Bringing this technology to the real world means accommodating all kinds of cars, of varying ages, types and capabilities.  Unless of course this advantage is made available only to those who are able to afford the newest and best vehicles, or we move to a uniform, government-regulated and maintained pod-car.